An Unplanned Summer Day Trip

My husband decided to take the day off today, so we got Kelsey up a little earlier than usual and made our way to this location:

No, we didn’t travel to Philadelphia. We went to the Jelly Belly Factory! We have been there quite a few times, but it is still a fun destination with a free tour and a free bag of Jelly Bellys at the end of the tour.

Then we headed here for lunch:

We don’t have a Chick-fil-a very close to our home, so we made sure to stop here for lunch today. Their chicken sandwiches are so good and I just love their fries.

Before heading home we stopped here (Barnes & Nobles):

The closest book store to us is over 30 minutes away. My one big unrealistic dream would be to have a room with floor to ceiling bookshelves completely filled with books. Maybe one day! The only thing we bought here was a Sherlock Holmes book for Kelsey. If I had unlimited funds, I would have bought a lot of books today!

Question for you: Where do you like to go on day trips?

Capture Your 365

Time to share a few of my Capture Your 365 photos from last week with you…

one flower

ISO 400, 50mm, f/3.5, 1/100 sec

Day 189 – One Flower: You know what this one flower means, fresh zucchini!

an ordinary moment

ISO 400, 50mm, f/3.5, 1/50 sec

Day 191 – An Ordinary Moment: This is my kitchen, meals are prepared here usually three times a day. It doesn’t always look this neat and organized, people do live here and we do make messes.

on the street

ISO 400, 50mm, f/4.5, 1/80 sec

Day 192 – On The Street: This is the street where we live. That is my son’s truck in the driveway of our home. It is a pretty quiet street and we are so thankful to live here!

stacks

ISO 400, 50mm, f/2.8, 1/10 sec

Day 193 – Stacks: Here is a stack of flannel baby blanket and wash cloth sets I have made recently. As you know, I have been making items and selling them to earn money for our Compassion trip to Mexico in January. See a set here you would like? Be sure to visit my Facebook page and see what else I have for sale!

Questions for you: What did you photograph this past week? What would you consider an ordinary moment in your home?

Compassion’s Photo Scavenger Hunt

Compassion is hosting a fun photo scavenger hunt this month and there are some fun prizes they are giving away if you want to participate! Be sure to pop over to the Compassion blog to read this post which has all the details. The contest runs through the end of July, so you have plenty of time to start looking for those photos and posting them with the hashtag #CompassionHunt.

Here are a couple I have already posted on my Instagram account:

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Church sign: our church hosted a free VBS last week and this was the sign that was outside our church.

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Cow: living in the Central Valley of California, we drive past a lot of dairy farms on our way to one of the ‘big towns’.

Question for you: Do you have an Instagram account? I would love to follow you, so be sure to find me on Instagram or leave your profile name/link in a comment below.

Taming the Fabric Scraps

You know you have too many fabric scraps when they start to overflow the five tubs (yes, I did say five tubs!) that are already filled with scraps. Summer is the perfect time for me to tackle some of these projects that kind of get neglected during the school year. So I poured myself a big glass of iced coffee and got to work.

organizing fabric scraps

I spent most of the afternoon going through all of the fabric I had in these tubs, deciding which fabric I wanted to keep and which fabric I wanted to give away. For the fabric I was keeping, I organized it by colors. I figured this would be an easy way to find and use up some of the scrap fabric I have.

fabric scraps organized

After a couple of hours, I ended up with five bags of fabric to give away, and hopefully a more organized system of keeping and using up some of my scrap fabrics. I was also able to reduce the five tubs down to three tubs. One tub has scraps of batting, one tub has scraps of fleece, and one tub has scraps of flannel. Now to go find some ideas on Pinterest to use up some of these scraps of fabric!

Questions for you: How do you organize your scrap fabrics? And what types of projects do you like to do to use up your scrap fabric?

Capture Your 365

We are past the halfway mark! Even though I haven’t taken a picture for every prompt, this is still exciting that after 6 months, I am still making progress on this challenge.

a dark backdrop

ISO 100, 50mm, f/6.3, 1/200 sec

Day 180 – A Dark Backdrop: For the second time this summer, temperatures in our area were around 108 degrees. My husband and I were suppose to go on a miniature golf date, but with those temperatures, we knew we would just melt. So we drove over to the coast for the day instead, just the two of us. Capitola had temperatures in the low 70’s that day. Kev is not a beach person, so we walked around the shops and had an early dinner. We did walk out on the beach for a bit and I had a chance to get a few pictures under the pier which were perfect for this photo prompt.

whiskers

ISO 400, 50mm, f/3.5, 1/13 sec

Day 183 – Whiskers: I really need to start watching the shutter speed when I take pictures. Once I pulled this photo into Lightroom, I could see that parts of the photo are blurry, that I didn’t intend to be blurry. So to try to salvage the photo somewhat, I converted it to black and white. I probably should have used my 55-200mm lens on this one and zoomed in.

contrast

ISO 100, 50mm, f/3.5, 1/2000 sec

Day 184 – A Contrast: When we picked out the red chairs for our backyard beach retreat, I knew I wanted to have some type of blue pillow for the chairs. My daughter and I found the perfect material. I just love spending time out there with a good book and a glass of homemade iced coffee.

fireworks

ISO 400, 50mm, f/2.2, 1/20 sec

Day 185 – Fireworks:  I know these are not fireworks, but we generally don’t do fireworks at our house on Independence Day. I have a really hard time spending money on them, knowing that you are just going to burn them up. The month prior to Independence Day, our town does a big fireworks display during our town fiesta which we can watch from our driveway. So I couldn’t resist this bouquet of red, white, and blue flowers at least to decorate our table for Independence Day. At least cut flowers last for about a week or so.

Question for you: What did you photograph this past week?